Impact of aerosols on the Amazon shortwave surface and atmospheric radiation balance
Hongqing
Liu, University of Maryland, hql@atmos.umd.edu
(Presenting)
Rachel
T.
Pinker, University of Maryland, pinker@atmos.umd.edu
Hiroko
Kato, University of Maryland, hkato@atmos.umd.edu
Information on large-scale radiative fluxes over the Amazon Basin is needed for modeling and predicting the surface hydrological and energy budgets, for ecological modeling, for evaluating climate models, and for estimating net primary productivity. Aerosols are known to have an impact on the accuracy at which such fluxes can be estimated. Most available information on aerosols over land comes from point observations, which do not meet larger scale needs. Over the Amazon, aerosols from biomass burning are characterized by strong absorption and have strong effects on the shortwave radiation balance by weakening the aerosol ‘white-house’ effect at the top of atmosphere and decreasing the downward solar irradiance at the surface. From July to October strong signals of biomass burning have been detected both from in situ observations and satellite remote sensing, and have already been used for the evaluation of their radiative effect.
In this study an attempt is being made to synthesize available information on aerosol properties from observations and models for the entire Amazon Basin. This information is subsequently built into the surface radiation budget (SRB) model of the University of Maryland and sensitivity studies of the Amazon surface and atmospheric radiation balance to such inputs are conducted, both in the total solar spectrum and in selected spectral intervals of interest to biogeochemical modeling (e.g., the PAR region). Results for an entire annual cycle using observations from GOES satellites will be presented and evaluated against ground observations.